McDonald’s touches German hearts with special ads in I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!
The campaign IP Deutschland (RTL) teamed up with the agencies Heye OMD and OMG Fuse (Omnicom Media Group) to propose new creative formats for McDonald’s in their challenge to get closer to German consumers and communicate around the idea that eating their burgers is a real treat. The context? The tenth season of a highly successful show Ich bin ein Star – holt mich hier raus! (I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, also known as the Jungle Camp). The format? The campaign was built around three special formats: cut-ins, product placement and pre-splits, all of which were closely coordinated and developed with the editorial team to seamlessly fit in the storytelling. 1. During the show, short branded cut-ins regularly appeared with sentences related to the story-telling (for example “Now a little treat”, “Oh, finally”).   2. The product placement took place at the end of an episode when a candidate left the adventure and was brought to a McDonald’s restaurant as his first experience out of the jungle. IP was very careful in integrating this event seamlessly and naturally. Lars-Eric Mann, Sales Director for IP Germany explains: “It was an excellent opportunity to boost the brand. Viewers liked the integration because it looked and felt authentic – an advertising format that is special in every sense of the word: creativity, complexity, effort and most of all effectiveness.”   3. A pre-split closed the campaign (a 30 second spot embedded in a branded frame aired just before the start of the actual advertising break). It showcased strong emotional images with memorable music to reflect the happiness around McDonald’s 60th anniversary.

Results

Cut-ins were perceived as discrete and fitting by the audience. Viewers who remembered the cut-ins attributed much more positive adjectives to the brand, perceiving it as “innovative”, “likable” and “trustworthy”, than the viewers who didn’t recall them.

- Thanks to the product placement, viewers attributed sentences such as “this is delicious” or “I like spending time here” with McDonald’s. Two thirds of viewers could remember McDonald’s presence, and 33% could even quote specific scenes and also name individual products (22%). A vast majority (67%) of viewers also liked the product placement, and 66% affirmed it made them want to go to a McDonald’s restaurant again.

- The pre-split format was the most successful and convinced 74% of the viewers. 85% believed it was very fitting to McDonald’s image, 74% found it was a creative format, 65% consider it was different from other ads they had seen for brands in the same sector.

Nicolas von Sobbe, deputy spokesman for McDonald's Germany expressed the brand’s satisfaction with the campaign: "The Jungle Show with its enormous reach is a great environment for McDonald's. With a little tongue-in-cheek humor, it even fits thematically. And who couldn’t imagine craving a Big Mac after a few days in the jungle camp?"

 Why does this matter for egta members?

When creative formats provide advertisers with such great value for money, it isimportant for sales houses to share the information so that colleagues can learn from such best-case studies. Lars-Eric Mann sums up by explaining how much it matters for a sales house nowadays to attract clients with original formats: “I’m always happy when advertisers are open-minded about new formats and are enthusiastic about the content of a program like the ‘Jungle Show’…. The figures, like reach or CPM, speak for themselves in any case."